


Nearly Departed

by Ziracona



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Death, Depression, Hallucinations, Josh Washington One Shot, Mental Illness, One Shot, Suicide mention, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 02:12:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9945683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ziracona/pseuds/Ziracona
Summary: A few months before the group meets back up at Mount Washington, Josh visits the Lodge by himself for the first time since Hannah and Beth disappeared.  Completely alone on the mountain, Josh thinks back over the past year tries to grapple with the loss of his sisters, and his isolation from his friends.  But then, is he ever really alone now?A short Josh Washington One-Shot.





	

* * *

 

Nearly Departed

 

It’s quiet.  And still.  Everything hangs in the air like dust, caught in the light.  If I were making a picture we’d call it atmosphere, and it would come out of a can.  But this dust is real.  The dust of a year gone by.

It’s cold outside.  It’s cold inside.  I’m glad I wore the big coat.  I like the cold, but I have things I must get done.  I have to stay warm for now.

It’s not really the dust of a year.  It’s the dust of ten months and eleven days.  Maybe eleven days and fourteen hours, but that part is anyone’s guess.

I love the quiet, and how big and empty the house is.  It beckons.  It whispers in every dark, shadowy corridor and crevice.  Every sharp-edged coffee table, and marble statue.  The cold echoes off the mountain and ricochets softly around the room.  Cold and still, frozen in time.  Like a tomb.

The whole mountain is a tomb.  Fitting.  I’m so…relieved.  I was afraid it would be different, the kind of still you get the morning after a party, if you wake up first.  The whirlwind wreckage of things in the past lies still, but it’s a broken and discarded still—like a possible future left and exchanged for a better choice.  This is not that still.

This is the still of a cemetery in mid-winter, or a pine forest in the fall.  This is the still of death, once it’s no longer warm. 

It’s perfect.  Everything I wanted.  I was so—God I was so afraid.  I was so afraid it would still be alive, like last year.  Like when we were all here last.  That I would look around and see my—see them.  Walking down the halls.  But it’s dead inside the house.  The mountain really is the tomb, and I’m so relieved, because it had to be.  It had to be, it had to be, it had to be.  If it wasn’t the tomb then.

Then there would be nothing at all to let me release the breath caught in my chest.  Even for a second.  The ache would get stronger, and I already can’t bear it. 

Some people get buried when they die, others get burned.  I would prefer buried.  Burned leaves nothing behind.  Burned away scares me.  There’s something comforting about leaving bones.  Like you’re still there.

But I would take either in a heartbeat.  Because I have nothing.  I have no bodies to bury, no body to burn.  Just gone.

Legally, they aren’t dead.  Just “missing.”  But you don’t go missing on the mountain for ten months, eleven days, and fifteen hours to come back.  Not like this.

Dead, and no bodies.  No goodbye. 

I guess it makes sense.  That’s why they follow me.  

I said it was quiet, but that’s a lie.  It was a lie even when I thought it.  I was telling myself it was quiet because I wanted it to be.  Nothing is quiet.  They are always around.  Whispering.

Their ghosts had to go somewhere.  No burial, no burning, no goodbye.  It makes sense that they’d come to me, doesn’t it?  I let them down.  I deserve to be haunted.

I want to be left alone, I can’t stand it—I can’t handle them another second!  That’s such a hateful thing to feel.  I hate myself for thinking it.  This is penance, and I deserve it.  This is for drinking, for passing out.  For not being there when they needed me.  I deserve it.

But I just want them to end.

I want them to go, to be at peace.  I can’t see them everywhere, or I’m going to lose my mind.

But what does that matter?

What does it even matter anyway. 

If I had just succeeded in joining them the first time, I wouldn’t be here now.  I wouldn’t have lived long enough to remember I have a mom and a dad.  I’m broken, but I’m all they have left. 

Living is pain.  Sometimes I see the phone and I want to remember what it felt like not to be empty.  I want to make movies again, and talk to someone, anyone, and I don’t know if he even misses me, but I want to trust Chris again, because maybe they’re right and some of it’s just in my head.

But then I remember.

I can’t change the past. 

All I can do is this.  Come back, and make things right.  If the mountain is their tomb, I am the gravestone.  I can’t end until their names are carved in stone.


End file.
